Silly Job #2 

Silly Job #2

Today I was planning a nice relaxing day off.

You see, yesterday, I had applied to a temp agency that promised to find me a job by the beginning of next week. The type of job they provided was light industrial, but nothing I couldn't handle after my Supply One Plastics stint.

I set my alarm every morning for 8:45 AM. I don't know why I do this, because I always get up and turn it off, and then go back to sleep. Today, being like any other day, I turned off my alarm and went to sleep.

15 minutes later, the phone rang. Somehow, intuitively, I knew it was for me. I jumped to my feet and answered it.

It was the temp agency. Someone called off sick today at a place called Fusion Coatings. I was excited. I always wanted to work on a fusion reactor even if it was just a job packing stuff.

I told them I could make it there by 10:00 and ran off.

I got to work at exactly 10:00 AM. I didn't know what to expect when a guy covered with tattoos took me back and showed me what I'd be doing.

A line of hooks holding shiny, different hooks swang by and I was to make sure that the hooks didn't touch each other before they went into some bizarre chamber filled with black, powdery smoke.

Cool.

I did that for four hours. It was sure easy, but I hadn't seen any atoms fuse with other atoms yet.

Next I was taken to a large, blue, hot machine. At this machine I was told to put in little, 'G' shaped hooks on a conveyor belt that disappeared into interior of the beast. I was told that I'd have to put the little 'G's into the machine at a rate of 4000 per hour.

Wow!

For those of you who don't realize how fast that is, as a requirement for a data entry position I applied for, I had to transcribe data between a sheet of paper and a computer at a rate of 4000 characters per hour to qualify. I could do 7000 characters per hour, but I certainly couldn't feed this machine as fast as I could copy data.

Soon though, I quickened my pace as my hands became used to the job. I could not, however, figure out the purpose of this task.

Was I sacraficing the 'G's to fire-breathing, howling, banshee?

Then it dawned on me.

The 'G's were probably bits of plutonium and I was feeding the nuclear fusion reactor itself. Like the coal-boy of a steam-ship I was maintaining the power of the whole factory, all of Pennsylvania, and much of the Tri-State Area!

With so much responsibility dealt to me, I became a master of placing the metal bits on the belt, and the remaining two hours of the shift flew by.